I Reviewed EVERY Apple Product of 2023!
- You're a professional and you need a laptop that can keep up with your fast paced lifestyle. However, laptops never measure up to their desktop counterparts, so you're always compromising on power, speed, and battery life in the name of portability. You're used to dealing with spinning wheels and freezing screens and you've grown accustomed to constantly searching for a power outlet. You've even started to bring your desktop computer with you on business trips.
I'm looking at you, Marques. You've tried every laptop out there and you're tired of having to make compromise after compromise. Then something changes. A new laptop is released that promises to be different and you keep hearing that it actually lives up to the hype.
You try it and discover that it is, in fact, the best laptop for pros ever made. That computer is the MacBook Pro and what's crazy is that it was released back in 2021 and Apple just made it even better. Let's talk about it. Last week, Apple announced the availability of updated 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros, packing new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, making them even more powerful than they already were. Apple sent over this 16 inch M2 Max model that I've been testing.
Inside the box, you'll basically find three things. Obviously, there's the MacBook Pro itself, the 140 watt charging adapter, which can fast charge this laptop, more on that later, and the braided MagSafe charging cable. Oh, and if you love Apple stickers, of course, there's one in here too.
Now, there's a lot to these new machines, which I'll get to in the full review, so be sure you're subscribed for that. But in the meantime, if you're interested, I will have links to these down in the description below if you wanna check them out for yourself. That said, let's start by talking about the features you need to know about, starting with the design. If you didn't pick up the 2021 model, then you'll want to be aware that the ports have been brought back to the MacBook Pro.
I'm talking about the return of the SD card slot, which is something every creative professional who I know uses. The return of HDMI, which is something I rarely use, but in corporate environments is a must have for presentations. And this new model can connect to TVs and displays at up to 4K with a 240 hertz refresh rate, and even 8K TVs at 60 hertz. There's also the return of MagSafe, which supports fast charging the MacBook Pro, giving you 50% charge in just 30 minutes. There's even a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack that includes advanced support for high impedance headphones, and three USB-C ports that are now Thunderbolt 4.
The Magic Keyboard saw changes too with the removal of the touch bar, which has been replaced with full-size function keys, including a key for quick toggling, do not disturb. There's also a 1080p FaceTime camera now, which I'm mentioning in the design portion of the video, because it's in this display cutout. This is how Apple made the borders at the top thinner by wrapping it around the camera module.
But speaking of that display, let's talk about it. There are two sizes of the new MacBook Pro, 14.2 inches with a resolution of 3024 by 1964, and 16.2 inches at a 3456 by 2234 resolution.
Both sizes use the same mini-LED technology that Apple ships on the 12.9 inch iPad Pro, offering much better local dimming when compared to previous LED displays. And these are also ProMotion displays, which allow for adaptive refresh rates at up to 120 hertz. They'll automatically adjust based on what you're doing, so if you're scrolling or playing a game, you can expect the refresh rate to increase. But if you're reading a static document, the refresh rate will imperceptibly drop, which is a bonus for your battery life. It'll also offer the option for users to set locked-in refresh rates, which is important for video editing and other use cases that rely on specific screen settings.
Now these mini-LED screens can put out a thousand nits of sustained brightness, with 1600 nits peak brightness for HDR content. For reference, the last Intel MacBook Pro topped out at 500 nits. The display is so good that it's hard not to call it the most impressive feature, but then there's the performance. On the real, Apple Silicon is out here shining.
Apple introduced the two most powerful chips it's ever created for its laptops in the M2 Pro and M2 Max. These are more powerful versions of the M2 chip that we saw launched in the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro and redesigned MacBook Air last summer, and those were already impressive. While the M2 Pro is the baseline chip for the MacBook Pro, you can upgrade to the M2 Max for even more performance, and that's the version I've been testing here. So let's talk about that chip.
The M2 Max takes the already impressive M2 architecture to an even higher level. It supports up to 400 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth and up to 96 gigabytes of RAM. Yes, Apple is about to have you out here walking around town with a laptop with 96 gigabytes of RAM in it.
That's the most ever in a laptop chip. This is unified memory, which allows the CPU and GPU to share a single pool of memory, which means your GPU has access to way more than the typical 16 gigabytes you'd find on a dedicated laptop graphics chip. For those who work with video, the industry-leading media engine and ProRes acceleration means you can play back up to 43 streams of 4K ProRes or 10 streams of 8K ProRes video while preserving CPU and GPU power. The M2 Max sports a 12-core CPU with eight high-performance cores and four efficiency cores, and you can get the GPU with up to 38 cores, giving you 30% faster GPU performance than the M1 Max from the previous model, which brings me to gaming. And I know it's weird to talk about gaming in a Mac video, but I played "Resident Evil Village" on the M2 Max MacBook Pro and as you can see here in the Metal Performance HUD, the game ran perfectly. The Metal Performance HUD, by the way, is an on-screen overlay that allows you to monitor gameplay performance with real-time stats and logging, memory usage, resolution, CPU and GPU render time, and frame presentation deadlines.
Just Google it and you can see how you can turn it on for yourself. I wanted to get a feel for what the M2 Max can do, so I bumped all the settings to maximum at a resolution of 1440p with Metal FX upscaling quality mode enabled, and as you can see, the game was hitting about 140 to 175 frames per second, again at max settings. Then I decided to really tax the system by changing the resolution of the game to 3456 by 2234.
That's the full resolution of the MacBook Pro's display. Now, without Metal FX upscaling enabled, it hovered around 80 to 90 frames per second in this mode, which was surprising, but even more so, re-enabling Metal FX upscaling quality mode brought it to 110 frames per second. That's maximum resolution at maximum settings, and the MacBook Pro handled it like a beast. One other bump in performance this year, Apple has upgraded the latest MacBook Pros to Wi-Fi 6E like they did with the latest M2-based iPad Pros. You'll need a Wi-Fi 6E router to take advantage of the new speeds, which are up to twice as fast when compared to the previous generation. Up next, let's talk about one of the most impressive stats about the new MacBook Pro, battery life.
The dream is to be able to carry around your laptop without having to worry about also bringing the charger with you everywhere you go, and that dream was achieved when Apple released its M1 laptops, but the 2023 16-inch MacBook Pros take it to another level, giving users up to 22 hours of video playback, which is the longest battery life ever on a Mac, and 15 hours of wireless web browsing, which is a three-hour increase from the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro. The power-efficient design of Apple Silicon allows for the same level of performance, whether you're plugging in or running on battery, and when it comes to charging, the 140-watt power adapter for the 16-inch model will charge the battery again to 50% in just 30 minutes. Next, we need to talk about sound. The MacBook Pro includes a high-fidelity six-speaker sound system with a force-canceling woofer and wide stereo sound, along with a studio-quality three-microphone array with a high signal-to-noise ratio and directional beamforming. Now, Apple has been at the top of the computational audio game, in my opinion, as we've seen the company do some amazing things with the sounds coming from AirPods and the iPhone and iPad's built-in speakers and the previous generation MacBook Pro.
The speaker array also supports spatial audio when playing music or video with Dolby Atmos, creating a three-dimensional sound stage that sounds incredible. There are no better speakers on a laptop than what you'll find on the 16-inch MacBook Pro in particular. MacBook Pro gives you performance and battery life like never before.
You can configure your 14 or 16-inch with the latest M2 Pro or M2 Max chip for ultimate power efficiency and long-lasting battery life. So whether you're a developer, photographer, filmmaker, 3D artist, scientist, music producer, or anything in between, this is the laptop that will take your creativity to the next level. For years, the Mac Mini has been the entry-level desktop computer for Apple enthusiasts. It was a compact and affordable option for those who wanted the power of a Mac without breaking the bank. The Mac Mini is known for its small form factor, easy setup, and affordability, but it was often considered underpowered compared to its bigger brother, the iMac. It was a popular choice for those who needed a basic computer for everyday tasks, such as browsing, email, and document editing.
But with the introduction of the new M2 Pro chip, the Mac Mini has transcended its entry-level status and entered the realm of high-performance computing. For the first time, the Mac Mini now has the power of a MacBook Pro, and that's a game changer. I've been using the new Mac Mini with M2 Pro chip for several days now, and I am seriously impressed. And this form factor, alongside the power of the M2 chip, is the reason why.
If you wanna pick up the new Mac Mini for yourself, I will leave a link down in the description below, but for now, let's get started by talking about this design. The new Mac Mini maintains the same compact and minimalist design as the previous model. It's a silver squircle measuring 1.41 inches in height by 7.75 inches in width and depth, and weighing in at just 2.82 pounds,
on the back, you'll find a variety of ports, including four Thunderbolt 4 ports with support for speeds up to 40 gigabits per second, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port that supports 4K at up to 240 hertz, or 8K at 60 hertz, a gigabit ethernet port that you can optionally configure up to 10 gigabit, and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack that supports high impedance headphones and line out for amplified speakers. When it comes to wireless connectivity, the Mac Mini has been upgraded with support for WiFi 6E, allowing for twice the speed of the previous models, as well as Bluetooth 5.3. Next, let's talk about performance. While the Mac Mini is available in both M2 and M2 Pro configurations, I'll be specifically talking about the M2 Pro model that I've been using. This one has the M2 Pro with a 12-core CPU, 19-core GPU, 16 gigabytes of RAM, and a one terabyte SSD.
Now, as I mentioned, the M2 Pro brings pro-level performance to the Mac Mini for the first time. It's built around a faster unified memory system with up to 200 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth, supporting up to 32 gigabytes of memory. The M2 Pro chip in this one has eight high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, delivering up to 1.9 times more performance than the M1 model, and the GPU here delivers up to 2.6 times more graphics performance than the M1. More on that shortly.
One thing I personally love, as someone who works with video on a daily basis, is the M2 Pro's media engine, which accelerates video encode and decode. Video editing is almost 20 times faster on this Mac Mini when compared to the fastest core i7 Intel model, and about three times faster than the M1 model, which is an insane leap in generation-to-generation performance. And even if you aren't a video editor like I am, on the whole, the Mac Mini with M2 Pro is up to 14 times faster than the fastest Intel-based Mac Mini, so it can handle demanding workflows with ease, from photo and video editing to gaming.
Yes, let's talk about gaming for a moment. This is interesting, because I don't think I've ever talked about gaming in any Mac review that I've done over the past 17 years that I've been doing this job, with the exception of my review of the new MacBook Pro, which you can check out on my channel as well. But I digress. Gaming performance on the Mac Mini with the M2 Pro chip is up to 15 times faster than the fastest Intel-based Mac Mini. So that just means gaming is on a whole 'nother level here.
With the new Metal 3 technologies, like Metal FX upscaling, we're getting more immersive visuals, faster performance, and quicker loading in-game. Pairing your favorite game controller makes gaming on the Mac more convenient too. One game I was particularly interested in testing on the new Mac Mini was "Resident Evil Village," a game I'm very familiar with from playing it on the Xbox Series X. It's one of the first games to use Metal FX upscaling, delivering incredibly responsive gameplay with high frame rates and beautiful visuals. I played "Resident Evil Village" in HD on the M2 Pro Mac Mini, and as you can see here in the Metal performance HUD, the game ran smoothly with no hiccups. The Metal performance HUD, by the way, is an onscreen overlay that allows you to monitor gameplay performance with real-time stats and logging, memory usage, resolution, CPU and GPU render times, and frame presentation deadlines.
I started with the prioritize graphics option at 1080p, and as you can see, the game was hitting about 115 to 140 frames per second. Then I went in and enabled Metal FX upscaling quality mode, and things jumped to around 140 to 165 frames per second. And lastly, I then decided to switch the resolution to 2560 by 1440, that being the maximum resolution supported by the studio display, and bumped everything up to Mac settings. Now, I would have expected this to bring a Mac Mini to its knees, but instead, as you can see, the game continued to play at about 60 to 80 frames per second. This is playing on a computer that weighs less than three pounds and is under an inch and a half tall.
That's just incredible. I also tried NBA 2K as well from Apple Arcade, which stayed at a locked and smooth 60 frames per second. Now, to be clear, I wouldn't buy the Mac Mini if I was looking to purchase a dedicated gaming machine. That isn't its primary purpose, and you can definitely do better elsewhere if gaming is your primary or only need. However, what we are seeing here is that the Mac Mini is now more than capable of holding its own when it comes to gaming as one of the many things in its arsenal of features. And that brings us to our final point, price.
Apple has dropped the price for the M2 Mac Mini when compared to the M1. The entry-level Mac Mini with M2 chip starts at 599, a decrease of $100, while the Pro model I've been talking about will set you back at 1299. Now, that might seem like a lot, but when you factor in how much performance it has compared to Intel or even M1-based Mac Minis, it's actually a very good deal. Overall, the new Mac Mini maintains its sleek, compact, and minimalist design, making it a great option for those who have limited space or are looking for a portable desktop.
The variety of connection and ports allow for easy connection to a variety of peripherals. The wireless capabilities are also improved, providing faster and more efficient connectivity. It's small, but it packs a punch, enabling a wide range of pros, from creators to scientists, developers to engineers, and even gamers to unlock new workflows that just weren't doable on the Mac Mini before. The original HomePod was released by Apple in 2018, but was discontinued in 2021.
Despite being well-reviewed for its sound quality, the original HomePod struggled to gain market share against competitors such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home, due in part to its higher price point and limited functionality compared to those devices. Since then, we've had the HomePod Mini serving as Apple's smart music speaker, but there hasn't been anything in the market that's been able to match up to the sound quality of the original HomePod until now. This is the new second-generation HomePod, and I am so glad that it's here. I'll leave a link in the description if you wanna check it out for yourself, but for now, let's talk about it.
Let's start with the design. The new second-generation HomePod has been designed to complement any space with its elegant and modern look. It comes in two colors. There's white along with a new midnight color. You won't be able to really tell it apart from the space gray of the previous generation, but Apple does say that this is definitely a new hue. The HomePod is wrapped in a seamless mesh fabric that looks great in your home and was specifically designed for its acoustic performance.
The fabric is made from recycled materials, reducing environmental impact. On top, the HomePod now features a touch surface that illuminates from edge to edge, making it easy to access quick controls and adjust volume, play and pause music, and also activate Siri. The touch surface also illuminates differently depending on your request, showing a white pulse when playing media, a multicolor view when Siri's activated, and a green indicator when a phone call is active or sound recognition check-in is in progress, and more on that later. If you're curious about the dimensions, the new HomePod is 6.6 inches in height, 5.6 inches in width, and weighs in at 5.16 pounds. Next, let's talk about sound quality.
This is the most important section because it's what sets the HomePod apart from the HomePod Mini. The larger HomePod exists in order to provide much better sound quality, and if it failed there, there'd be no reason to buy it when the Mini can do everything else, and I'm so very happy to say that the HomePod thrives in this area. The HomePod features a number of advanced audio technologies that work together to deliver truly remarkable sound quality.
One of the key features is the high-excursion woofer, which uses a powerful motor to drive the diaphragm and produce rich, deep bass. Additionally, an internal bass EQ microphone dynamically adjusts the low frequencies to ensure that they're balanced and consistent. The HomePod also features a beam-forming array of five tweeters, which are specifically designed to produce stunning high frequencies. These tweeters are specialized for high-pitched notes and use custom transducers, horns, and neodymium magnets to ensure all the details of the music come through with clarity. To further enhance the audio experience, the HomePod also uses advanced computational audio, which is powered by the Apple S7 chip. This allows the HomePod to adjust its sound in real time based on the environment and what's being played.
Room sensing technology is also used to measure the sound reflections off neighboring surfaces so that the HomePod can adapt its sound to the room that it's in. I tested a variety of songs, and the HomePod performed beautifully. From the intricate guitar work and layered harmonies of the Eagles Hotel California to the pulsing beats and soaring vocals of the Weeknd's "Blinding Lights," the HomePod delivered each song's unique elements with clarity and precision. The deep bass and crisp high frequencies in Beck's "Morning" were particularly impressive.
One of the most striking demonstrations of the HomePod's sound quality was when I played Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." The complexity of the song's structure and instrumentation was handled with ease by the HomePod's advanced computational audio. The sound was fully immersive with vocals and harmonies seemingly coming from all directions. To fully experience the HomePod's capabilities, I also listened to Apple's "Made for Spatial Audio" playlist, and it was a truly remarkable experience. That playlist obviously includes songs, "Made for Spatial Audio," which the HomePod supports.
The sound was fully immersive and makes me feel like you're right in the middle of the music. It's an uncanny feeling to stand in front of the HomePod looking right at it while it's playing music. And to your ears, music is coming from all sorts of different directions, not just from this device that's in front of you. Overall, the HomePod's woofer, tweeters, computational audio, room sensing tech, and internal bass EQ all work together to deliver great sound quality with rich deep bass and amazing high frequencies, making it perfect for enjoying music the way it was intended to be.
Overall, the HomePod offers an unparalleled audio experience that is sure to impress even the most discerning of music lovers. But that's one HomePod, which leads me to using multiple HomePods. Using multiple HomePods will enhance your listening experience in several ways, because one of the best things you can do with a HomePod is create a stereo pair with a second HomePod. This allows for a wider and more immersive soundstage.
Once the second speaker is added, not only is the bass deeper and richer, but your music will fill an even larger space. To set up a stereo pair, you can simply open the Home app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and follow the prompts to add a second HomePod to the room. Once paired, the HomePods will automatically separate the left and right channels.
Every single song I tested obviously sounded better in this configuration versus just one standalone HomePod. But what surprised me is that it sounds way better. Like in my opinion, two HomePods sounds more than twice as good. Multi-room audio allows you to play music on multiple HomePod speakers throughout your home, all in perfect sync. So you can play the same music in every room, or even a different song in different rooms, all controlled by your voice with simple commands like, "Yo, Siri, play jazz in the kitchen," or, "Yo, Siri, play my favorites playlist everywhere."
Wait a minute, I didn't realize that saying, "Yo, Siri," would actually activate Siri. Apologies to everyone out there. This feature also works with AirPlay-enabled speakers or TVs, creating a whole home sound system that gives you the flexibility to control the audio experience in every room, even in rooms that don't have a HomePod. With multi-room audio, you can easily enjoy music, podcasts, and audiobooks in any room of your home, making it perfect for parties, gatherings, or just everyday use. Then there's intercom on HomePod and HomePod mini, which is a convenient way to communicate and stay connected to other members of your household.
You can send an intercom message from one HomePod speaker to another in a different room or to all HomePod speakers throughout your home. And it's also easy to respond just by telling Siri you wanna reply. Intercom works with iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and even CarPlay, allowing you to extend your home intercom system anywhere. Next, let's talk about Siri. I use Siri on the HomePod as a digital assistant that helps me stay on top of my day-to-day tasks and activities.
Now, I'm sure you all know this by now, but you can ask Siri to do things like check the weather, set timers or alarms, and get a news update without having to pick up your phone. One of the best things about Siri on the HomePod is that it can recognize up to six different voices, allowing each member of the household to have their own personalized experience. This means that each person can check their own calendar, call people in their own contacts, create a reminder in their own reminders app, find their individual iPhone, and more. Overall, Siri on the HomePod is a powerful and versatile personal assistant that can make your life easier and more convenient in many ways. And that brings me to smart home integration, 'cause the HomePod also acts as a home hub, supporting matter and integrating a thread radio, connecting to the smart accessories in your home and allowing you to control your smart home while you're away.
With that matter support, an even wider variety of accessories made by some of the most popular smart home brands can now be controlled with the HomePod. This means both matter and home kit compatible accessories can be seamlessly and securely used together to create scenes and automations that enable you to manage and stay connected to your home at any time. The HomePod also offers powerful smart home capabilities that allow you to control all of your smart home accessories with just your voice.
So you can say Siri, turn on the lights or set the thermostat to 72 degrees. The HomePod also includes built in temperature and humidity sensing, sound recognition to identify smoke or carbon monoxide alarms and ambient sounds integrated into scenes and automations to help you relax and focus. And more on sound recognition in just a bit.
The built in temperature and humidity sensor can measure the temperature of the room it's placed in and can be used to set automation. So for example, when the temperature in the living room rises above 75 degrees, the blinds can close to keep the sunlight out. And again, you can use Siri to set up automations like lower the blinds every night at dusk, creating your ideal environment.
HomePods also offer ambient sounds that can be added to scenes, automations and alarms for more relaxation. Ambient sounds have been completely remastered with even higher fidelity and detail. Now let's go back to talking about sound recognition. Sound recognition is a feature of the HomePod that allows it to listen for smoke or carbon monoxide alarms and send a notification to your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch if one is heard.
This feature can give you greater peace of mind, especially when you're away from home. When sound recognition is activated, the HomePod will constantly listen for alarms and send a notification to your connected devices if one is detected. The notification will include a sound clip of the alarm so you can confirm whether it's a real emergency or not. Additionally, sound recognition will also show a banner at the top of the Home app and you can tap on the notification on your iPhone or the banner to check in and hear what's going on.
If there's a camera in that same space, then the video feed is conveniently included in that notification too. Users can set which rooms in the home have alarms that should be listened for and can also adjust the sensitivity of the feature to minimize false alarms. And that brings us to the Apple ecosystem.
The HomePod is designed to seamlessly integrate with Apple devices. So these include the iPhone, the iPad and Apple TV 4K. This allows for a variety of convenient features and functionality such as being able to control what's playing on the HomePod using Siri or using the iPhone or iPad to control the music on the HomePod. When paired with an Apple TV 4K, the HomePod can also enhance the audio experience and supports surround sound formats such as Dolby Atmos and Dolby Digital.
Additionally, the HomePod also supports AirPlay which allows for easy streaming and control of audio playback from other Apple devices. The HomePod also has additional proximity controls that allow for personalized music and podcast suggestions and the ability to control what's playing when an iPhone is brought close to it. With Handoff, users can also keep listening to music, podcasts or calls from their iPhone to the HomePod and vice versa when their U1 enabled iPhone is brought near which is very cool.
The HomePod is a powerful and versatile smart speaker that is designed to work seamlessly with your Apple devices. Its high fidelity sound quality and advanced audio technology make it a great option for music enthusiasts while its built-in Siri functionality allows for control and interaction with your other Apple devices. Overall, the HomePod is a great option for those primarily looking for a premium experience in their smart speaker. If that isn't you, then the HomePod mini can do just about everything that the larger HomePod can do at a fraction of the price. But if you're an audiophile, this is the best sounding smart speaker you can buy at this price point and the stereo pair will blow you away. Today I'm gonna be talking with Apple about the Mac and Apple Silicon, specifically the recently released M2 Pro Mac mini and the M2 Pro and Macs MacBook Pros, as well as Apple's approach to designing and developing its chips.
Now in my M2 Macs MacBook Pro review, I mentioned that it's the best laptop available for pros. So I am super excited for this conversation. I've got Laura Metz, the director of product marketing, Anand Shimpi from Hardware Technologies, and Tuba Yalchin, a 3D effects and pro workflow expert joining me. So let's jump in. Hey guys, it's great to see you.
First of all, I just wanna thank you for your time today. Thanks for joining me. - Thank you very much for having us.
- All right, before we jump into some of the details, I wanna find out from each of you guys, how did you get into using Apple products or the Mac in particular? What's your origin story there? - Well, my first experience using a Mac was in high school and it came, I had to use a Mac that the school provided to start scholarship applications. And so that was my first experience jumping in on word processing and using a Mac there. And then it actually wasn't until, unfortunately, or fortunately, until I started working at Apple nearly 20 years ago that I fully switched to a Mac and made that part of my daily life and of course have never looked back. - Yeah, for me, I think early on in school, I was exposed to kind of Apple computers. I had an Apple 2E at home a long, long time ago. But in my adult life, it was kind of college when I really got into the Mac.
I remember I was taking a kind of a compiler architecture class and the Mac was disproportionately represented in that auditorium. And I remember like looking over at people next to me and they were doing all this really cool stuff on the Mac that ultimately kind of piqued my curiosity. And that's how I ended up picking one up kind of in the early 2000s.
- And yeah, for me, it was always a MacBook Pro. I really liked what it represented. It was a device for the creatives. And I felt like having one, being a creative was like the lifestyle choice I was making, committed to my creativity. And I think when the iPhone was launched, I thought like, oh, the iPhone and the Mac, these are the ecosystem, like the power tools that will enable me.
- So obviously I'm talking to three different people at Apple from three different teams. And it was probably on purpose that it was set up this way because that's how you guys design products in the first place. Apple doesn't just buy different components from different manufacturers and put them all into one product and then ship it. Instead, it's really different teams that all come together to make and form the final product.
So could you guys tell me how that process works behind the scenes? - We really do create our products using a very collaborative approach across many different disciplines, whether that's from design, hardware, software engineering, we've got Anand with hardware technologies here and our pro workflow team, which we believe is very unique to Apple. And I wouldn't even say we start a project. It's like the projects don't end. We might ship a product, but we're constantly communicating and that those same conversations, they just continue on to the next as we continue to innovate and move things forward.
- I will agree with Laura's comment. As a pro workflow team, we really need to work collaboratively across different teams at Apple because it's everyone coming together and making these changes happen. It's super collaborative and it's really nice to see the efforts of that collaboration. When the display team was part of something and then the GPU team was part of something and the OS team was part of it, it really makes a difference. And I think that's why some of the features we bring shows that. And I think the users also appreciated that it's not just one thing that's being great, it's everything altogether being gelled perfectly.
- Yeah, the Silicon team doesn't operate in a vacuum. I think when these products are being envisioned and designed, the folks on the architecture team, the design team, they're there. They're aware of where we're going, what's important, both from a workload perspective, as well as the things that are most important to enable in all of these designs. And so, yeah, no, I'd echo the same thing.
It is very collaborative. - That makes sense. And as a creative myself, I still remember my first real interaction with a Mac. This is about 17 years ago, walking into an Apple store. And what caught my attention when I was playing with the Mac was I minimized the window and it kind of genied down into the dock. And I was almost taken aback by that action because it was so different.
Just that interaction felt so different from what I was used to on the PC side of things. And it made me just wanna explore the Mac and macOS more. So I literally walked out of that Apple store with a Mac mini, the first Mac mini, and I haven't looked back ever since. So needless to say, I'm a big Mac fan and I'm excited to get into it. Let's start with the design of some of the products that you've just launched. Obviously there is the new M2 Mac mini, but I'm focusing more on the MacBook Pro with this question.
You just launched the M2 Max and M2 Pro MacBook Pros. And at the beginning of this design generation, if you will, we saw the return of things like different ports and MagSafe. Apple in the past has never been a company that shied away from dropping what it considered to be legacy ports or legacy technologies.
But here we saw these things return. So could you tell me a little bit about how Apple settled on the designs of the 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros, as well as the decision to actually bring ports back for its users? - Overall, designing the new 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pro that debuted with the M1 Pro and M1 Max was incredibly exciting because it was the first time we had Apple Silicon going into these Pro products. And we knew there was these things we would be able to do and have the vision materialized for products. Previously, we'd only been able to imagine. And I think knowing how well the 16 inch MacBook Pro was received when it was launched, we wanted to be able to bring more screen real estate across the MacBook Pro product line. And so excited to bring the 14 and 16 inch together when we launched that product.
And I think overall, I mean, you asked specifically about the ports themselves. Of course, we always drive to have the thinnest products that we can, just really that they are easy for you to carry around, right? It's all about we want you to be able to have this mobile powerhouse with you. And certainly thin and light plays a part of that. And with Apple Silicon and this new design, we were able to bring HDMI and SD back. We know having a wide array of ports can certainly benefit Pro workflows.
So we were excited about that. And then of course, bringing MagSafe back with more support for its capability for charging and fast charging. So we were excited about that. I think we all also have stories about how MagSafe has helped protect our Mac in various scenarios. - And talking about those two sizes of 14 and 16 inches, with Apple Silicon, you're able to provide the same power regardless of which one the user chooses, which is generally not typical.
Usually the smaller device you get, the less powerful it is. And that's not even taking the M2 iPad Pro into account, where you just have all this power in a super thin device. Can you give us some insight into how you're putting increasingly more powerful chips into increasingly smaller devices over time? - Yeah, so I think part of what you're seeing is this, now decade plus long kind of maniacal obsession with power efficient performance and energy efficiency. If you look at the roots of Apple Silicon, it all started with the phone and the iPad. And there, we're fitting into very, very constrained environments.
And so we had to build these building blocks, whether it's our CPU or GPU media engines, neural engine, to fit in something that's way, way smaller from a thermal standpoint and a power delivery standpoint than like a 16 inch MacBook Pro. And so I think the fundamental building blocks are just way more efficient than what you're typically used to seeing in a product like this. I think the other thing that you're noticing is for a lot of tasks that maybe used to be high powered use cases, on Apple Silicon, they actually don't consume that much power. If you look at like the, compared to what you might find in a competing PC product, depending on the workload, we might be a factor of two or a factor of four times lower power.
That allows us to kind of deliver a lot of these workloads that might've been high power use cases on a different product in something that actually is a very quiet and cool and long lasting sort of use case. The other thing that you're noticing is that single threaded performance, so the snappiness of your machine, it's really the same like high performance core, regardless of if you're talking about a MacBook Air, 14 inch Pro, 16 inch Pro, or like the new Mac mini. And so, you know, all of these machines can accommodate one of those cores running full tilt. Again, we've turned a lot of those usages and use cases into low power workloads.
You can't get around physics though, right? So there, you know, if you light up all the cores, all the GPUs, the 14 inch system just has less thermal capacity than the 16, right? So depending on your workload, that might drive you to a bigger machine, but they're really, the chips are kind of across the board, incredibly efficient. - Yeah, and when you said you can't beat physics, that's an interesting statement, because it's obviously true. But at the same time, Apple Silicon has been such a revelation in the industry, because while you can't beat physics, no one is coming as close to beating it as Apple has with Apple Silicon.
And I think what you just said is a good point. When it comes to single core, whether you buy an M2, M2 Pro, or M2 Max, when it comes to single core performance, you get the same experience. And that's regardless of which chip you choose, which hasn't been the case in the past. So when you were choosing between a core i3, i5, i7, or i9, if you went with the core i3, you might see a delay if you have too many tabs open or just trying to launch your email app versus going with a higher end chip. Contrast that with Apple Silicon, and you can get a base level M2 and start editing 8K video.
But the other side of the coin that you mentioned, I did want to touch on battery efficiency. So there's all this power there, and at the same time, while these devices are thin and lightweight, giving us more battery life in the same size chassis with double digit performance gains on both CPU and GPU. So I think the question on a lot of people's minds is how? How is it possible to ship a Mac with the longest battery life ever while also giving double digit performance gains in the same size computer? - We of course have this incredible chip, and Anand will speak to what we did there to improve the efficiency and get more battery life. In addition to that, we're always working with a number of teams to make many optimizations to get the most out of the hardware that we have.
And so that includes working closely with macOS and firmware across the system entirely to really optimize things so we are getting the most out of it. - Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at how chip design works at Apple, one, you have to remember we're not a merchant silicon vendor. At the end of the day, we ship product. And so the story for the chip team actually starts at the product, right? There is a vision that the design team, that the system team has that they want to enable. And the job of the chip is to enable those features, enable that product and deliver the best performance within the constraints, within the thermal envelope of that chassis that's humanly possible.
- And so if you look at kind of what we did going from the M1 family to M2 Pro and M2 Max, at any given PowerPoint, we're able to deliver more performance. If you look at on the CPU, we added two more efficiency cores, two more of our E-cores. And that allowed us to deliver kind of, it was part of what allowed us to deliver more multi-thread performance. Again, at every single PowerPoint where the M1 and M2 curves overlap, we're able to deliver more performance at any given PowerPoint. The dynamic range of operations a little bit longer, a little bit wider.
So we do have a slight increase in terms of peak power, but in terms of efficiency kind of across the range, it is a step forward versus the M1 family. And that directly translates into battery life. The same thing is true for the GPU. It's kind of counterintuitive, but a big GPU running at a modest frequency and voltage is actually a very efficient way to fill up the box. And so that's been our philosophy, dating back to iPhone and iPad, and it kind of continues in the Mac as well.
But really the thing that we see, the thing that the iPhone and the iPad have enjoyed over the years is this idea that every generation gets the latest of our IPs, our latest CPU IP, latest GPU, neural engine media engine, so on and so forth. And so now the Mac gets to be on that cadence too. And if you look at how we've evolved things on the phone and iPad, those IPs tend to get more efficient over time.
There is this relationship. If the fundamental chassis doesn't change, any additional performance you deliver has to be done more efficiently. And so this is the first time the MacBook Pro gets to really enjoy that and be on that same sort of cycle. - It is incredible.
And I want to bring Tuba in on this as well, 'cause I was excited to find out that we were gonna have someone from Apple's Pro Workflows team here. Now I'm just assuming here, but it seems obvious that a lot of what we're seeing these days from Apple has been at least informed by the Pro Workflows team, which I believe was announced back in 2018. Can you give me a rundown of who this team is comprised of and what type of feedback and information Apple gathers from it? - Absolutely. We have some incredibly talented creatives who are area experts in audio music, video, photography, 3D visual effects industries. And we are paired with super smart system architects. And together we work on these very complex, challenging Pro Workflows and make them run awesome on the Mac.
So it's a fun collaboration between like technology and art. And we kind of gather both of them, both sides together and make them, yeah, run perfect on the Mac. - So what are some of the results of the Pro Workflow team? Apple put the team together in conjunction with the announcement that the 2019 Mac Pro would be coming in the future.
So the team has been there for a while now. Can you talk about some of the things that consumers are directly benefiting from and using in Apple products today that maybe we might not have seen if not for the Pro Workflow team? - I mean, it's a collective effort. I think we, as a Pro Workflow team, we work very closely cross-functionally across Apple, whether it's hardware or software. And we've been championing for these Pro features that we want on the platform and constantly push for more performance.
But we also look for the future and see what's coming. And so there's always innovation in our minds and we kind of try to keep up the pace when it comes to innovation as well. - Often we'll hear people in the media say that Apple won't make this product as powerful as this other Apple product because then it would cannibalize the sales of the more expensive products. And that kind of flies in the face to what Steve Jobs famously said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that if anything is gonna cannibalize an Apple product, it should be another Apple product.
And it really feels like we're seeing that mantra kind of play out with the launch of the M2 Pro Mac Mini. For the first time, you're giving the power of the MacBook Pro to users of the Mac Mini. And the result here is you no longer need to buy the more expensive MacBook Pro if that's the level of performance you want but don't need the portability.
So can you talk a little bit about that philosophy of what the M2 Pro Mac Mini in particular means to the Mac lineup? - I think it was a real exciting announcement and got a very positive reception because it is something new. I think it was somewhat unexpected given we announced this amazing Mac Studio product just last year. And I think it's just exciting to have these options that give users that flexibility, that with Mac Mini, with the M2, the M2 Pro, that really is a broad range of performance based on your user needs.
And if you need to take it further, you have Mac Studio. And then of course, pushing that to the extreme, you have Mac Pro. So I think just again, we want to just serve those customers and their needs and give them that choice and flexibility. So we're really excited to bring M2 Pro to Mac Mini.
- On the silicon side, the team doesn't pull any punches, right? I think the goal across all the IPs is, one, make sure you can enable the vision of the product. So if there's a new feature, new capability that we have to bring to the table in order for the product to have everything that we envision, that's clearly something that you can't pull back on. And then secondly, it's do the best you can, right? Get as much down in terms of performance and capability as you can every single generation. And I think the other thing is, at the end of the day, Apple's not a chip company.
At the end of the day, we're a product company. So if what we want to deliver, whether it's features, performance, efficiency, if we're not able to deliver something compelling, we won't engage, right? We won't build the chip. And so each generation, we're motivated as much as possible to deliver the best that we can. - Obviously, as a tech reviewer, I have my own opinion on what I recommend people buy for their own specific needs. But from Apple's perspective, you have the range, as you mentioned, the Mac mini, the iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro.
Do you have a philosophy towards how you would recommend a consumer make a choice when they're looking at the lineup and making a purchase? - Oh, that's an interesting question. We really want to put that in the hands of the user based on their needs. And I think our goal is to make sure if they're looking for that everyday product that they have options for both a desktop and a laptop. And if they are pushing their creativity and need more performance and going to that pro level, they also have amazing options for a desktop and a laptop.
- Okay, let's have some fun and move on to the explain it like I'm five years old section. I think there's some things that people understand for the most part, and some things that they might not grasp that I'm hoping you guys can help clarify. So one of the things I think a lot of people don't fully grasp is the neural engine. I think they understand the CPU and the GPU on the RAM, at least for the most part, because they understand the direct benefit of each of those things.
But the neural engine feels a bit more mysterious. So how would you explain what the neural engine is and how it directly benefits the customer? - Yeah, so I'll take the first half of that. And then I think Laura can chime in with some of the customer benefits. There are really two things you need to think about, right? The first is this trade off between a general purpose compute engine and something a little more specialized. So if you look at our CPU and GPU, these are big general purpose compute engines.
They each have their strengths in terms of the types of applications you'd want to send to the CPU versus the GPU. Whereas the neural engine is more focused in terms of the types of operations that it's optimized for. But if you have a workload that's supported by the neural engine, then you get the most efficient, highest density place on the chip to execute that workload.
And so that's the first part of it. Second part of it is, well, what kind of workload that we're talking about? And our investment in the neural engine dates back years ago, right? So the first time we had a neural engine on an Apple Silicon chip was A11 Bionic, right? So that was five-ish years ago on the iPhone. And really it was the result of us realizing that there were these emergent machine learning models where that we wanted to start executing on device. And so we brought this technology to the iPhone.
And then over the years, we've been increasing its capabilities and its performance. And then we made the transition of the Mac to Apple Silicon. It got that IP just like it got the other IPs that we brought, like things like the media engine, our CPU, GPU, secure enclave, so on and so forth. So when you're going to execute these machine learning models, performing inference on these inference driven models, if the operations that you're executing are supported by the neural engine, if they're fit nicely on that engine, like I said, it's the most efficient way to execute them. Now, the reality is the entire chip is optimized for machine learning, right? So a lot of models you will see execute on the CPU, the GPU and the neural engine. And we have frameworks in place that kind of make that possible.
But the goal is to always execute it at the most, in the highest performance, most efficient place possible on the chip. - And I would just add that the end benefit of that is just more performance and your system is doing more for you. And you're not even aware of it. One great example would be things we do with our image signal processor, that it is taking information from that image coming in and adjusting your image and optimizing your image.
So there's benefits across the board. And I think the magic is, you don't even know what's happening. It's all done for you and highly optimized. - Okay, next, the nanometer process. I think this is another one that the average person doesn't quite fully grasp when they see it mentioned in a keynote.
So how would you explain what this is and the importance of decreasing that nanometer process size? - Yeah, so here I think you're referring to the transistor. These are the building blocks by which all of our chips are built out of. And the simplest way to think of them is like a little switch. And we integrate tons of these things into our design. So if you look at M2 Pro and M2 Max, you're talking about tens of billions of these.
And if you think about large collections of them, that's how we build the CPU, the GPU, the neural engine, all the media blocks. Every part of the chip is built out of these transistors. Moving to a new transistor technology is one of the ways in which we deliver more features, more performance, more efficiency, better battery life.
So you can imagine if the transistors get smaller, you can cram more of them into a given area. That's how you might add things like additional cores, which is something you get in M2 Pro and M2 Max. You get more CPU cores, more GPU cores, so on and so forth.
If the transistors themselves use less power or they're faster, that's another method in which you might deliver better performance, better battery life, better efficiency. Now I mentioned this is one tool in the toolbox. What you choose to build with them, the underlying architecture, micro architecture and design of the chip, also contribute in terms of delivering that performance, those features and that power efficiency. - Okay, and as we've seen in the past, you can still improve a chip and make it better even without decreasing the transistor size.
- Yeah, so if you look at the M2 Pro and M2 Max family, and we talk about that being on a second generation five nanometer process, and as we talked about earlier, the chip got more efficient at every single operating point. The chip is able to deliver more performance at the same amount of power. - All right, and next, the media engine.
When you look at the afterburner card in the Mac Pro and then compare it to the size of the media engine on the M2 package, it's just hard for me to wrap my head around these performance gains. How did you take something that was so large and then fit it onto something so tiny and give it more performance? - Yeah, and I think that's, going back to the point around transistors, I think taking that IP and integrating it on the latest kind of highly integrated SOC with the latest transistor technology that lets you run it at a very high speed and you get to extract a lot of performance out of it. And I think the other thing is, and this is one of the things that's fairly unique about Apple Silicon, we build these highly integrated SOCs. So if you think about the traditional system architecture in a desktop or a notebook, you might have a CPU from one vendor, a GPU from another vendor, each with their own sort of DRAM. You might have accelerators kind of built into each one of those chips, you might have add-in cards as additional accelerators. But with Apple Silicon in the Mac, it's all single chip, all backed by a unified memory system.
You get a tremendous amount of memory bandwidth as well as DRAM capacity, which is unusual, right, in a machine like this. Normally, a CPU is used to having a very large capacity, low bandwidth DRAM, and a GPU might have very low capacity, high bandwidth DRAM. But now the CPU gets access to GPU-like memory bandwidth, the GPU gets access to CPU-like capacity.
And that really enables things that you couldn't have done before. Really, if you're trying to build a notebook, these are the types of chips that you want to build it out of and the media engine comes along for the ride, right? This is technology that we refined over the years, building for iPhone and iPad. And these are machines that, you know, the camera's a key part of that experience.
And being able to bring some of that technology to the Mac was honestly pretty exciting. And it really enabled just a revolution in terms of the video editing and video workflows. - How has the media engine kind of evolved over time? - You know, I think one of the things that was pretty exciting, and it goes back to your question around, how do we work with teams like the Pro Workflows team? I think the addition of ProRes as a hardware accelerated encode and decode engine as a part of the media engine, that's one of the things that you can almost trace back directly to working with the Pro Workflows team, right? This is a codec that it makes sense to accelerate, to integrate into hardware. It's important for both our customers, you know, the people that we're expecting to buy these machines.
And it was something that, you know, the team was able to integrate. I think for those workflows, there's nothing like it in the industry, on the market. - I feel pretty certain that you've heard some interesting stories of how people push their Macs to the limit. So I'm curious if you could share any story about people using their Mac in a way that impressed or even shocked you.
- I'll start that off with some more general answers to that. Ed, Anand and Tuba may have some specific fun examples, but we've been developing Macs for our Pro community for a long, very long time. And we're so inspired by what they do. And that really is what drives us to constantly be pushing the capabilities forward. And so when we talked about these latest MacBook Pros with Apple Silicon, we talk about how it's just been a complete game changer.
And we don't just say that. We're hearing these examples of these amazing scenarios of what it truly has enabled for creative Pros, whether that's a photographer who needs to, you know, wants to go out into the wilderness to take photos and used to, you know, have to lug and carry all this equipment, who now because the performance and the amazing battery life is fine to go out, you know, on that expedition, carrying his latest MacBook Pro to folks creating musical scores that can just tax the system in incredible ways. But they're able to do that all on their notebook and, you know, not have to be back at the studio. And they can be cross continent working with the studio and able to piece that all together.
And so these ideas that you don't have to be in the edit bay in the studio, that you can be remote and not only be remote, but you can get that same performance that you would have whether you're plugged in or on battery. And that's been huge for our Pros as well. - Yeah, just to follow Laura's comment, like we've seen singer songwriters recording songs on their MacBook Pro, but the built-in microphone because they don't have the fan noise interfering anymore.
And they can just take that workflow wherever they want, wherever that creative idea comes in and they can just create, which is really delightful to see. And a
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